For many investors watching their retirement accounts, it’s nerve-wracking. Many are bailing out of stocks and into bonds. Some are grasping for gold as a tangible nugget of safety. Others are wondering if they’re better off in CDs and money-market funds. Regardless, the advice from most investment advisers is consistently the same: Don’t panic. Hang in there. Brad Barber is cited in this article discussing why the long-term view is most important when it comes to investment planning.

The following articles feature UC Davis Graduate School of Management faculty research, recent School activities, and student and alumni news. These stories belong to the media outlets that published them, and some sites require free registration. We cannot guarantee the availability of the links, which may expire.

When the New York Philharmonic anointed Lorin Maazel as its new music director with widespread approval from its players, the oldest American orchestra was following a quiet but steadily growing national trend to bring musical democracy to the stage.

Driven partly by financial strains and declining audiences, many orchestras in large and midsize cities are experimenting with power-sharing arrangements that defy the traditional musical hierarchy that placed players under the rule of highly paid conductors and powerful, wealthy board members.

Women business executives in California hoping to reach parity with their male counterparts may have to wait awhile-–say, a century, according to UC Davis. This article reports on the study, which showed women are a long way from cracking the state’s glass ceiling, since the percentage of female leaders at the 400 largest public companies headquartered in California–-which together represent nearly $3 trillion in shareholder value–is growing just 0.2% a year, according to the report.

The glass ceiling still hovers above the heads of female business leaders, and will for a long time, according to a new study from the University of California Davis. This article reports on the the annual UC Davis Study of Women Business Leaders, which showed that the proportion of women who hold top positions in California is growing so slowly that it will take more than 100 years to catch up with their male counterparts.

This article reports on the seventh-annual “Study of California Women Business Leaders: A Census of Women Directors and Highest-Paid Executives” at California’s 400 largest companies conducted by UC Davis.

The proportion of women who lead California’s largest companies is growing at such a slow pace that it will take more than a century for women business leaders to achieve parity with men, a UC Davis study has found. This article reports on the seventh annual UC Davis Study of California Women Business Leaders, which found that women still occupy fewer than one in 10 of the top posts at the 400 largest public companies headquartered in California — a rate that has improved by just 0.2 percent annually.

This article reports that Sacramento technology start-up KlickNation has been sold to gaming giant Electronic Arts Inc. in what’s likely a multimillion-dollar transaction, both companies announced today. KickNation was founded by Graduate School of Management alumnus Mark Otero ‘07, who will head what will become BioWare Sacramento, a division of EA’s BioWare social gaming unit.

Scientists and engineers have traditionally made great entrepreneurs. However, translating new technology into a viable business plan is a skill that must be honed and adapted over time. This article reports on UC Davis Big Bang! business plan competition winner Inserogen and describes how they are building and modifying their business plan on the road to using tobacco plants to manufacture more cost-effective and rapidly produced vaccines.

This article reports on the new interdisciplinary institute devoted to education, research and outreach in innovation and entrepreneurship at UC Davis, with the help of a $5 million commitment from alumni Mike and Renee Child. The institute will strengthen the coordination of entrepreneurship and innovation activities across UC Davis’ colleges, schools, centers and organized research units, becoming the university’s unifying structure for these pursuits.

Many colleges and universities have taken steps to provide students with more environmentally friendly classrooms and have even started offering bachelor’s and master’s degree programs in topics like sustainability. In this article, U.S.News and the HECAC recognize the GSM for our efforts and recent LEED platinum certification form the U.S. Green Building Council.

UC Davis has landed a $5 million commitment with which to create a new institute for innovation and entrepreneurship. The commitment from UC Davis alums Mike Child and Renee Child will transform the UC Davis Center for Entrepreneurship into a larger institute that can do much more, and which will have stable funding for years to come. “UC Davis is home to an amazing array of expertise across disciplines,” Hargadon said in the release. “This institute will help our faculty and students translate their knowledge and skills into ventures that improve society and add value to the economy.”

This article reports on the launch of a new institute devoted to education, research and outreach in innovation and entrepreneurship at UC Davis. The Child Family Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship was made possible through a $5 million commitment from alumni Mike and Renee Child, both 1976 UC Davis graduates.

Maurice J. Gallagher Jr. Hall, home of the Graduate School of Management at the University of California, Davis, has earned a “platinum” certification from the U.S. Green Building Council, the first business school building in California awarded the highest green building ranking. Nationwide, only two other business school buildings have won a platinum ranking.

This article cites Professor Brad Barber’s recent research showing that, on average, the most active traders had the poorest results, while those who traded the least earned the highest returns. In another paper, “Boys Will Be Boys,” Barber and colleague Terry Odean reported that men act on their useless ideas significantly more often than women do, and that as a result women achieve better investment results than men.

In a potentially huge boost for Sacramento’s technology industry, UC Davis is embarking on a major partnership with one of the world’s leading genetics researchers. The university’s partnership with BGI, a research institute from Shenzhen, China, could help turn the Sacramento area into a hub for pharmaceutical and agricultural biotech companies – a status community leaders have been craving for years.

Vaccine from tobacco: Big Bang! Business Plan Competition 2010 winner, Inserogen, is highlighted: “One team from UC Davis has developed a method to quickly grow and extract vaccines from tobacco plant leaves. Using the leaves, the team can grow a full-fledged vaccine in just six weeks, at a cheaper cost that traditional production methods, which usually involves extracting vaccines from fluid in chicken eggs.”

Dean Steven Currall and Bill Jesse, the vice chairman of the Wine Group, the second largest wine company in the world, offer a model for focusing executives on creating long-term sustainable value vs. other “toxic” compensation plans that focus on short-term rewards.

“Wineries have come off the [social media] sidelines in 2011,” says Jeremy Benson, president of the Napa- and New York City-based Benson Marketing Group. “We’ve added eight brands to our new Mission Control social media service.” Benson will be an expert guest speaker at the UC Davis Wine Executive Program in March.

This article reports Professor Brad Barber’s latest research, conducted with Terrance Odean of UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, which finds that individual investors do not behave rationally, as economic theory would suggest. The bottom line: “Investors who don’t know they perform poorly end up believing that they’re doing well — the incompetent are unaware.”

This article cites a 2006 study led by Professor Brad Barber that analyzed the trading record for Taiwan’s stock exchange for four years in the 1990s. They found that, in a typical six-month period, “more than eight out of 10 day traders lose money” and that total losses were staggering: 2.2 percent of Taiwanese GDP annually.

GSM alumni Jake Taylor and Lonnie Rush, lecturers who teach Value Investing, had students wrap up the course by submitting their top investment picks to a year-long portfolio contest. They found 512 stocks selling for less than net current asset value and 212 selling below ⅔ of net current asset value. Read more about this investing approach.

(Davis, Calif.) – With a joint goal of speeding the transfer of new technologies from the laboratory to the commercial marketplace, the UC Davis Graduate School of Management, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories have announced a new partnership for researchers to develop their entrepreneurial skills.

What opportunities, decisions, events have shaped your professional life?

My career path has been a climb across a jungle gym rather than a tangent up a corporate ladder. As a child, I used to thumb through the three-inch JCPenney catalogue, picking out the professional women who I would grow to be. I wanted to rule the world from a corner office in a suit and heels. I wanted to shed my humble origins and become Corporate Barbie.

Agilent Technologies’ Electronic Measurement Group is a $3.6 billion business that over the past decade has seen a dramatic shift in its customer base from U.S., and Western European customers to predominantly Asia-based customers. Today, the majority of the division’s revenues are generated outside of the U.S., with an increasing concentration in China.

(Davis, CA) — The UC Davis Graduate School of Management’s full-time MBA program has been ranked among the top six percent of AACSB International-accredited programs nationwide, according to U.S. News & World Report’s latest graduate business school rankings released today.